Public health care interventions—regarding vaccination, obesity, and HIV, for example—standardly take the form of information dissemination across a community. But information networks can vary importantly between different ethnic communities, as can levels of trust in information from different sources. We use data from the Greater Pittsburgh Random Household Health Survey to construct models of information networks for White and Black communities--models which reflect the degree of information contact between individuals, with degrees of trust in information from various sources correlated with (...) positions in that social network. With simple assumptions regarding belief change and social reinforcement, we use those modeled networks to build dynamic agent-based models of how information can be expected to flow and how beliefs can be expected to change across each community. With contrasting information from governmental and religious sources, the results show importantly different dynamic patterns of belief polarization within the two communities. (shrink)

There was a methodological revolution in the mathematics of the nineteenth century, and philosophers have, for the most part, failed to notice.2 My objective in this chapter is to convince you of this, and further to convince you of the following points. The philosophy of mathematics has been informed by an inaccurately narrow picture of the emergence of rigour and logical foundations in the nineteenth century. This blinkered vision encourages a picture of philosophical and logical foundations as essentially disengaged from (...) ongoing mathematical practice. Frege is a telling example: we have misunderstood much of what Frege was trying to do, and missed the intended significance of much of what he wrote, because our received stories underestimate the complexity of nineteenth-century mathematics and mislocate Frege’s work within that context. Given Frege’s perceived status as a paradigmatic analytic philosopher, this mislocation translates into an unduly narrow vision of the relation between mathematics and philosophy. This chapter surveys one part of a larger project that takes Frege as a benchmark to fix some of the broader interest and philosophical significance of nineteenth-century developments. To keep this contribution to a manageable.. (shrink)

In this article, I consider how the epistemic problem of religious disagreement has been viewed within the Islamic tradition. Specifically, I consider two religious epistemological trends within the tradition: Islamic Rationalism and Islamic Traditionalism. In examining the approaches of both trends toward addressing the epistemic problem, I suggest that neither is wholly adequate. Nonetheless, I argue that both approaches offer insights that might be relevant to building a more adequate response. So, I attempt to combine insights from both by drawing (...) a distinction between inferential and noninferential reflective responsibility. Given this distinction, I argue that it may be possible for a theist to remain steadfast in upholding their tradition-specific theistic belief, without having to hold that belief by way of inference; but nevertheless, having to be sufficiently reflectively responsible in forming their theistic belief noninferentially. (shrink)

In this work, Jamie Mayerfeld undertakes a careful inquiry into the meaning and moral significance of suffering. Understanding suffering in hedonistic terms as an affliction of feeling, he claims that it is an objective psychological condition, amenable to measurement and interpersonal comparison, although its accurate assessment is never easy. Mayerfeld goes on to examine the content of the duty to prevent suffering and the weight it has relative to other moral considerations. He argues that the prevention of suffering is (...) morally more important than the promotion of happiness, and that the duty to relieve suffering is much stronger than most of us acknowledge. (shrink)

A cluster of recent papers on Frege have urged variations on the themethat Frege’s conception of logic is in some crucial way incompatible with‘metatheoretic’ investigation. From this observation, significant consequencesfor our interpretation of Frege’s understanding of his enterprise are taken tofollow. This chapter aims to critically examine this view, and to isolate whatI take to be the core of truth in it. However, I will also argue that once wehave isolated the defensible kernel, the sense in which Frege was committedto (...) rejecting ‘metatheory’ is too narrow and uninteresting to support the con-clusions drawn from the thesis by its proponents. (shrink)

In reference to the philosophical theology of medieval Islamic theologian Ibn Taymiyya, this paper outlines a parallel between Taymiyyan thought and Alvin Plantinga’s thesis of ‘Reformed Epistemology’. In critiquing a previous attempt to build an account of ‘Islamic externalism’, the Taymiyyan model offers an account that can be seen as wholly ‘Plantingan’.

United in Hate analyzes the Left's contemporary romance with militant Islam as a continuation of the Left's love affair with communist totalitarianism in the ...

Keirkegaard's Metaphors offers an explaination of a more accessible way to understand Kierkegarrd by analyzing his persistent use of metaphors.

Amongst intellectuals and activists, neoliberalism has become a potent signifier for the kind of free-market thinking that has dominated politics for the past three decades. Forever associated with the conviction politics of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the free-market project has since become synonymous with the 'Washington consensus' on international development policy and the phenomenon of corporate globalization, where it has come to mean privatization, deregulation, and the opening up of new markets. But beyond its utility as a protest slogan (...) or buzzword as shorthand for the political-economic Zeitgeist, what do we know about where neoliberalism came from and how it spread? Who are the neoliberals, and why do they studiously avoid the label? Constructions of Neoliberal Reason presents a radical critique of the free-market project, from its origins in the first half of the 20th Century through to the recent global economic crisis, from the utopian dreams of Friedrich von Hayek through the dogmatic theories of the Chicago School to the hope and hubris of Obamanomics. The book traces how neoliberalism went from crank science to common sense in the period between the Great Depression and the age of Obama. Constructions of Neoliberal Reason dramatizes the rise of neoliberalism and its uneven spread as an intellectual, political, and cultural project, combining genealogical analysis with situated case studies of formative moments throughout the world, like New York City's bankruptcy, Hurricane Katrina, and the Wall Street crisis of 2008. The book names and tracks some of neoliberalism's key protagonists, as well as some of the less visible bit-part players. It explores how this adaptive regime of market rule was produced and reproduced, its logics and limits, its faults and its fate. (shrink)

How can researchers use race, as they do now, to conduct health-care studies when its very definition is in question? The belief that race is a social construct without “biological authenticity” though widely shared across disciplines in social science is not subscribed to by traditional science. Yet with an interdisciplinary approach, the two horns of the social construct/genetics dilemma of race are not mutually exclusive. We can use traditional science to provide a rigorous framework and use a social-science approach so (...) that “invisible” factors are used to adjust the design of studies on an as-needed basis. One approach is to first observe health-care outcomes and then categorize the outcomes, thus removing genetic differences as racial proxies from the design of the study. From the outcomes, we can then determine if there is a pattern of conceivable racial categories. If needed, we can apply dynamic notions of race to acknowledge bias without prejudice. We can use them constructively to improve outcomes and reduce racial disparities. Another approach is nearly identical but considers race not at all: While analyzing outcomes, we can determine if there are biological differences significant enough to identify classifications of humans. That is, we look for genetic patterns in the outcomes and classify only those patterns. There is no attempt to link those patterns to race. (shrink)

This investigation is motivated by the lack of scholarship examining the content of what firms are communicating to various stakeholders about their commitment to socially responsible behaviors. To address this query, a qualitative study of the legal, ethical and moral statements available on the websites of Forbes Magazine''s top 50 U.S. and top 50 multinational firms of non-U.S. origin were analyzed within the context of stakeholder theory. The results are presented thematically, and the close provides implications for social responsibility among (...) managers of global organizations as well as researchers interested in business ethics. (shrink)

Despite the prominence of person‐centred care (PCC) in nursing, there is no general agreement on the assumptions and the meaning of PCC. We sympathize with the work of others who rethink PCC towards relational, embedded, and temporal selfhood rather than individual personhood. Our perspective addresses criticism of humanist assumptions in PCC using critical posthumanism as a diffraction from dominant values We highlight the problematic realities that might be produced in healthcare, leading to some people being more likely to be disenfranchised (...) from healthcare than others. We point to the colonial, homo‐ and transphobic, racist, ableist, and ageist consequences of humanist traditions that have influenced the development of PCC. We describe the deep rooted conditions that structurally uphold inequality and undermine nursing practice that PCC reproduces. We advocate for the self‐determination of patients and emphasize that we support the fundamental mechanisms of PCC enabling patients' choice; however, without critical introspection, these are limited to a portion of humans. Last, we present limitations of our perspective based on our white*‐cisheteropatriarchy** positionality. We point to the fact that any reimagining of models such as PCC should be carefully done by listening, following, and ceding power to people with diversity dimensions*** and the lived experience or expertise that exists from diverse perspectives. We point towards Black, queer feminism, and critical disabilities studies to contextualize our point of critique with humanism and PCC to amplify equity for all people and communities. Theory and philosophy are useful to understand restrictive factors in healthcare delivery and to inform systematic strategies to improve the quality of care so as not to perpetuate the oppression of groups of people with diversity dimensions. *We purposely capitalize Black and use lower case for white to decentre whiteness and as an intentional act of antiracism (see White Homework a podcast series by Tori W. Douglas). **Cisheteropatriarchy describes people with intersecting identities of dominant social groups; cisgender is the gender identity that aligns with the gender you were assigned at birth, hetero means heterosexual, and patriarchy refers to structural systems of power based on maleness where women are often excluded and hold less power. ***With diversity dimensions, we refer to subjective lived experience and material realities of people that exist outside the ‘dominant minorities' of white‐cisheteropatriarchy, meaning groups of people in society who historically and currently hold more power and through this, structurally dominate the norms and possibilities of living for other people. (shrink)

Ethicists, policy-makers, and the general public have questioned whether artificial entities such as robots warrant rights or other forms of moral consideration. There is little synthesis of the research on this topic so far. We identify 294 relevant research or discussion items in our literature review of this topic. There is widespread agreement among scholars that some artificial entities could warrant moral consideration in the future, if not also the present. The reasoning varies, such as concern for the effects on (...) artificial entities and concern for the effects on human society. Beyond the conventional consequentialist, deontological, and virtue ethicist ethical frameworks, some scholars encourage “information ethics” and “social-relational” approaches, though there are opportunities for more in-depth ethical research on the nuances of moral consideration of artificial entities. There is limited relevant empirical data collection, primarily in a few psychological studies on current moral and social attitudes of humans towards robots and other artificial entities. This suggests an important gap for psychological, sociological, economic, and organizational research on how artificial entities will be integrated into society and the factors that will determine how the interests of artificial entities are considered. (shrink)

Recent philosophical literature has turned its attention towards assessments of how to judge scientific proposals as worthy of further inquiry. Previous work, as well as papers contained within this special issue, propose criteria for pursuitworthiness (Achinstein, 1993; Whitt, 1992; DiMarco & Khalifa, 2019; Laudan, 1977; Shan, 2020; Šešelja et al., 2012). The purpose of this paper is to assess the grounds on which pursuitworthiness demands can be legitimately made. To do this, I propose a challenge to the possibility of even (...) minimal criteria of pursuitworthiness, inspired by Paul Feyerabend. I go on to provide a framework for identifying the contexts in which pursuitworthiness criteria may promote the efficiency of scientific inquiry. I then spell out some implications this framework has for values and pursuit. (shrink)

Recent research has suggested that not all grapheme-colour synaesthetes are alike. One suggestion is that they can be divided, phenomenologically, in terms of whether the colours are experienced in external or internal space. Another suggestion is that they can be divided according to whether it is the perceptual or conceptual attributes of a stimulus that is critical. This study compares the behavioural performance of 7 projector and 7 associator synaesthetes. We demonstrate that this distinction does not map on to behavioural (...) traits expected from the higher–lower distinction. We replicate previous research showing that projectors are faster at naming their synaesthetic colours than veridical colours, and that associators show the reverse profile. Synaesthetes who project colours into external space but not on to the surface of the grapheme behave like associators on this task. In a second task, graphemes presented briefly in the periphery are more likely to elicit reports of colour in projectors than associators, but the colours only tend to be accurate when the grapheme itself is also accurately identified. We propose an alternative model of individual differences in grapheme-colour synaesthesia that emphasises the role of different spatial reference frames in synaesthetic perception. In doing so, we attempt to bring the synaesthesia literature closer to current models of non-synaesthetic perception, attention and binding. (shrink)

The Vitruvian Man is a metaphor for the “ideal man” by feminist posthuman philosopher Rosi Braidotti (2013) as a proxy for eurocentric humanist ideals. The first half of this paper extends Braidotti's concept by thinking about the metaphor of the “ideal nurse” (Vitruvian nurse) and how this metaphor contributes to racism, oppression, and burnout in nursing and might restrict the professionalization of nursing. The Vitruvian nurse is an idealized and perfected form of a nurse with self‐sacrificial language (re)producing self‐sacrificing expectations. (...) The second half of this paper looks at how regulatory frameworks (using the example of UK's Nursing and Midwifery Council Code of Conduct) institutionalize the conditions of possibility through collective imaginations. The domineering expectations found within the Vitruvian nurse metaphor and further codified by regulatory frameworks give rise to boredom and burnout. The paper ends by suggesting possible ways to diffract regulatory frameworks to practice with affirmative ethics and reduce feelings of self‐sacrifice and exhaustion among nurses. (shrink)

Although theory refers to organizational culture as an important variable in corrupt organizations, only little empirical research has addressed the characteristics of a corrupt organizational culture. Besides some characteristics that go hand in hand with unethical behavior and other features of corrupt organizations, we are still not able to describe a corrupt organizational culture in terms of its underlying assumptions, values, and norms. With a qualitative approach, we studied similarities of organizational culture across different corrupt organizations. In this study, we (...) performed content analysis on interviews of 14 independent experts about their experience with corrupt organizations. With this approach, we gained insights about different corrupt organizations spanning different branches (e.g., government, foreign trade, pharmacy, sports, building industry). We found that corrupt organizations perceive themselves to fight in a war, which leads to their taken-for-granted assumption that “the end justifies the means”. This assumption inspires many values and norms of the organizational culture. An important value in a corrupt organization is “security”, and an important norm is punishment of deviant (i.e., non-corrupt) behavior. Furthermore, managers and employees differ in their perception of organizational culture. While the management endorses values, such as success, results, and performance, and implements these values in their norms of goal setting, employees make use of rationalization strategies and endorse values of security and team spirit. (shrink)

The provider–patient relationship is typically regarded as an expert-to-novice relationship, and with good reason. Providers have extensive education and experience that have developed in them the competence to treat conditions better and with fewer harms than anyone else. However, some researchers argue that many patients with long-term conditions (LTCs), such as arthritis and chronic pain, have become “experts” at managing their LTC. Unfortunately, there is no generally agreed-upon conception of “patient expertise” or what it implies for the provider–patient relationship. I (...) review three prominent accounts of patient expertise and argue that all face serious objections. I contend, however, that a plausible account of patient expertise is available and that it provides a framework both for further empirical studies and for enhancing the provider–patient relationship. (shrink)

Volume 23, Issue 2, April 2024, Page 237-242.

Words associated with perceptually salient, highly imageable concepts are learned earlier in life, more accurately recalled, and more rapidly named than abstract words (R. W. Brown, 1976; Walker & Hulme, 1999). Theories accounting for this concreteness effect have focused exclusively on semantic properties of word referents. A novel possibility is that word structure may also contribute to the effect. We report a corpus-based analysis of the phonological and morphological structures of a large set of nouns with imageability ratings (N = (...) 2,023). High- and low-imageability nouns differed by length, etymology, prosody, affixation, phonological neighborhood density, and rates of consonant clustering. On average, nouns denoting abstract concepts were longer, more derivationally complex, and emerged in English from a different distribution of languages than did concrete nouns. We address implications for interactivity of word form and meaning as pertain to theories of word concreteness, lexical acquisition, and word processing. (shrink)

The most public-facing forms of contemporary Darwinism happily promote its worldview ambitions. Popular works, by the likes of Richard Dawkins, deflect associations with eugenics and social Darwinism, but also extend the reach of Darwinism beyond biology into social policy, politics, and ethics. Critics of the enterprise fall into two categories. Advocates of Intelligent Design and secular philosophers (like Mary Midgley and Thomas Nagel) recognise it as a worldview and argue against its implications. Scholars in the rhetoric of science or science (...) communication, however, typically take the view that Darwinism isn't a worldview, but a scientific theory, which has been improperly embellished by some; they uphold the distinction between is and ought and argue that science is restricted to the former. This prompts an is–ought problem on another level. I catalogue the ways in which Darwinism plainly is a worldview and why commentators' beliefs that it ought not to be distorts their analysis. Hence, it is their own worldview that precludes them from accepting Darwinism's worldview implications. (shrink)

What does it mean to be an expert? What sort of authority do experts really have? And what role should they play in today's society? Addressing why ever larger segments of society are skeptical of what experts say, Expertise: A Philosophical Introduction reviews contemporary philosophical debates and introduces what an account of expertise needs to accomplish in order to be believed. Drawing on research from philosophers and sociologists, chapters explore widely held accounts of expertise and uncover their limitations, outlining a (...) set of conceptual criteria a successful account of expertise should meet. By providing suggestions for how a philosophy of expertise can inform practical disciplines such as politics, religion, and applied ethics, this timely introduction to a topic of pressing importance reveals what philosophical thinking about expertise can contribute to growing concerns about experts in the 21st century. (shrink)

The key word in amy account of the different ways that visual details are presented by novels and films is "assert." I wish to communicate by that word the force it has in ordinary rhetoric: an "assertion" is a statement, usually an independent sentence or clause, that something is in fact the case, that it is a certain sort of thing, that it does in fact have certain properties or enter into certain relations, namely, those listed. Opposed to asserting there (...) is mere "naming." When I say, "The cart was tiny; it came onto the bridge," I am asserting that certain property of the cart of being small in size and that certain relation of arriving at the bridge. However, when I say "The green cart came onto the bridge," I am asserting nothing more than its arrival at the bridge; the greenness of the cart is not asserted but slipped in without syntactic fuss. It is only named. Textually, it emerges by the way. Now, most film narratives seem to be of the latter textual order: it requires special effort for films to assert a property or relation. The dominant mode is presentational, not assertive. A film doesn't say, "This is the state of affairs," it merely shows you that state of affairs. Of course, there could be a character or a voice-over commentator asserting a property or relation; but then the film would be using its sound track in much the same way as fiction uses assertive syntax. It is not cinematic description but merely description by literary assertion transferred to film. Filmmakers and critics traditionally show disdain for verbal commentary because it explicates what, they feel, should be implicated visually. So in its essential visual mode, film does not describe at all but merely presents; or better, it depicts, in the original etymological sense of that word: renders in pictorial form. I don't think that this is mere purism or a die-hard adherence to silent films. Film attracts that component of our perceptual apparatus which we tend to favor over the other senses. Seeing, after all, is believing. Seymour Chatman, professor in the department of rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of The Later Style of Henry James and Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. His contribution to Critical Inquiry, "Reply to Barbara Herrnstein Smith" appeared in the Summer 1981 issue. (shrink)

Although business and society scholars have sought to demonstrate that corporate social performance (CSP) leads to corporate financial performance (CFP), a complete model of the pathway from CSP to CFP has not been substantiated. One suggestion is that certain indicators of CSP are noticed by stakeholders, who then act in ways that ultimately affect the firm's CFP. The present study focused on the first step in this path: identifying the factors that initially lead a stakeholder group to target a particular (...) firm. Existing theory from the literature on the environmental movement, stakeholder theory, and CSP fostered the development of eight propositions regarding corporate environmental performance. Case studies of five environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) are used to address the propositions. The case studies also supply additional insight into ENGO targeting of particular firms, unrelated to the propositions, thereby facilitating the development of a theoretical model. (shrink)

In the present study, I sought to more fully understand stakeholder organizations’ strategies for influencing business firms. I conducted interviews with 28 representatives of four environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs): Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Greenpeace, Environmental Defense (ED), and Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). Qualitative methods were used to analyze this data, and additional data in the form of reviews of websites and other documents was conducted when provided by interviewees or needed to more fully comprehend interviewee’s comments. Six propositions (...) derived from Frooman (1999) formed the basis for the initial data analysis; all six propositions were supported to some extent. Perhaps more interestingly, the data revealed that Frooman’s model is too parsimonious to adequately describe stakeholder influence strategies and related alliances, necessitating the development of an alternative theoretical model grounded in the data collected. (shrink)

Words associated with perceptually salient, highly imageable concepts are learned earlier in life, more accurately recalled, and more rapidly named than abstract words (R. W. Brown, 1976; Walker & Hulme, 1999). Theories accounting for this concreteness effect have focused exclusively on semantic properties of word referents. A novel possibility is that word structure may also contribute to the effect. We report a corpus-based analysis of the phonological and morphological structures of a large set of nouns with imageability ratings (N = (...) 2,023). High- and low-imageability nouns differed by length, etymology, prosody, affixation, phonological neighborhood density, and rates of consonant clustering. On average, nouns denoting abstract concepts were longer, more derivationally complex, and emerged in English from a different distribution of languages than did concrete nouns. We address implications for interactivity of word form and meaning as pertain to theories of word concreteness, lexical acquisition, and word processing. (shrink)

Among social epistemologists, having a certain proportion of reliably formed beliefs in a subject matter is widely regarded as a necessary condition for cognitive expertise. This condition is motivated by the idea that expert testimony puts subjects in a better position than non-expert testimony to obtain knowledge about a subject matter. I offer three arguments showing that veritism is an inadequate account of expert authority because the reliable access condition renders expertise incapable of performing its social role. I then develop (...) an alternative explanation of expert authority that I call the epistemic facility account, arguing that having a certain type of competence in a subject matter or domain of subject matters is sufficient for explaining expert authority while avoiding the problems with veritistic accounts. (shrink)

Female leaders continue to face bias in the workplace compared to male leaders. When employees are evaluated differently because of who they are rather than how they perform, an ethical dilemma arises for leaders and organizations. Thus, bridging role congruity and social identity leadership theories, we propose that gender biases in leadership evaluations can be overcome by manipulating diversity at the team level. Across two multiple-source, multiple-wave, and randomized field experiments, we test whether team gender composition restores gender equity in (...) leadership evaluations. In Study 1, we find that male leaders are rated as more prototypical in male-dominated groups, an advantage that is eliminated in gender-balanced groups. In Study 2, we replicate and extend this finding by showing that leader gender and team gender composition interact to predict trust in the leader via perceptions of leader prototypicality. The results show causal support for the social identity model of organizational leadership and a boundary condition of role congruity theory. Beyond moral arguments of fairness, our findings also show how, in the case of gender, team diversity can create a more level playing field for leaders. Finally, we outline the implications of our results for leaders, organizations, business ethics, and society. (shrink)

The world is abuzz with experts who can help us in domains where we understand too little to help ourselves. But sometimes experts in one domain carry their privileged status into domains outside their specialization, where they give advice or otherwise presume to speak authoritatively. Ballantyne calls these boundary crossings “epistemic trespassing” and argues that they often violate epistemic norms. In the few cases where traveling in other domains is permissible, Ballantyne suggests there should be regulative checks for the experts (...) who are crossing domain boundaries. I argue that boundary crossing is warranted more often than Ballantyne allows. And while Ballantyne argues that boundary crossing is prima facie epistemically problematic, I contend that many cases of boundary crossing are not properly instances of “trespassing,” and, therefore, raise no prima facie epistemic concerns. I further argue that identifying cases of what I call “epistemic neighborliness” bolsters Ballantyne’s project, making it easier for novices and other experts to identify epistemic trespassing along with its epistemic problems. (shrink)

The problem of religious disagreement between epistemic peers is a potential threat to the epistemic justification of one’s theistic belief. In this paper, I develop a response to this problem which draws on the central epistemological thesis of skeptical theism concerning our inability to make proper judgements about God’s reasons for permitting evil. I suggest that this thesis may extend over to our judgements about God’s reasons for self-revealing, and that when it does so, it can enable theists to remain (...) steadfast amid disagreement with epistemic peers who hold a contrary theistic belief (i.e., atheistic belief). For if we’re unable to make proper judgements about God’s reasons for self-revealing, then for all we know, God has some reason for not revealing Himself to our apparent epistemic peer. Thus, their epistemic credentials needn’t provide reason to reduce one’s confidence to such a degree as to no longer uphold one’s theistic belief. (shrink)

Arbitrary symbolism is a linguistic doctrine that predicts an orthogonal relationship between word forms and their corresponding meanings. Recent corpora analyses have demonstrated violations of arbitrary symbolism with respect to concreteness, a variable characterizing the sensorimotor salience of a word. In addition to qualitative semantic differences, abstract and concrete words are also marked by distinct morphophonological structures such as length and morphological complexity. Native English speakers show sensitivity to these markers in tasks such as auditory word recognition and naming. One (...) unanswered question is whether this violation of arbitrariness reflects an idiosyncratic property of the English lexicon or whether word concreteness is a marked phenomenon across other natural languages. We isolated concrete and abstract English nouns, and translated each into Russian, Arabic, Dutch, Mandarin, Hindi, Korean, Hebrew, and American Sign Language. We conducted offline acoustic analyses of abstract and concrete word length discrepancies across languages. In a separate experiment, native English speakers with no prior knowledge of these foreign languages judged concreteness of these nouns. Each naïve participant heard pre-recorded words presented in randomized blocks of three foreign languages following a brief listening exposure to a narrative sample from each respective language. Concrete and abstract words differed by length across five of eight languages, and prediction accuracy exceeded chance for four of eight languages. These results suggest that word concreteness is a marked phenomenon across several of the world's most widely spoken languages. We interpret these findings as supportive of an adaptive cognitive heuristic that allows listeners to exploit non-arbitrary mappings of word form to word meaning. (shrink)

In this report, the phenomenology of two blind users of a sensory substitution device – “The vOICe” – that converts visual images to auditory signals is described. The users both report detailed visual phenomenology that developed within months of immersive use and has continued to evolve over a period of years. This visual phenomenology, although triggered through use of The vOICe, is likely to depend not only on online visualization of the auditory signal but also on the users’ previous (albeit (...) distant) experience of veridical vision (e.g. knowledge of shapes and visual perspective). Once established, the sensory substitution mapping between the auditory and visual domains is not confined to when the device is worn and, thus, may constitute an example of acquired synaesthesia. (shrink)

This article aims to draw on the ‘Qur'anic Rationalism’ of Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328) in elucidating an Islamic epistemology of theistic natural signs, in the lens of contemporary philosophy of religion. In articulating what Ibn Taymiyya coins ‘God's method of proof through signs (istidlāluhu taʿālā bi'l-āyāt)’, it seeks aid in particular from the work of C. Stephen Evans and other contemporary philosophers of religion, in an attempt to understand the relevance and force of this alternative to natural theology within (...) the Islamic tradition. In doing so, it aims to respond to existing criticisms of Ibn Taymiyya's perspective in the literature, and to consider the implications of a Taymiyyan reading of theistic natural signs, on the epistemic function of Qur'anic āyāt as theistic evidence. (shrink)

Soren Kierkegaard's Works of Love, a series of deliberations on the commandment to love one's neighbor, has often been condemned by critics. Here, Ferreira seeks to rehabilitate Works of Love as one of Kierkegaard's most important works. He shows that Kierkegaard's deliberations on love are highly relevant to some important themes in contemporary ethics, including impartiality, duty, equality, mutuality, reciprocity, self-love, sympathy, and sacrifice. Ferreira also argues that Works of Love bears on issues peculiar to a religious ethic, such as (...) the role of God as "middle term," and the possibility of preserving the aesthetic dimensions of love in a religious ethic of relation. (shrink)

Feyerabend is infamous for his defense of pluralism, which he extends to every topic he discusses. Disagreement, a by-product of this pluralism, becomes a sign of flourishing critical communities. In Feyerabend’s political works, he extends this pluralism from science to democratic societies and incorporates his earlier work on scientific methodology into a procedure for designing just policy. However, a description and analysis of Feyerabend’s conception of disagreement is lacking. In this paper, I reconstruct and assess Feyerabend’s conception of disagreement, with (...) a particular emphasis on the role of experts, and its role in the formation of science policy. I go on to assess this argument in light of recent literature on manufactured disagreement on politically contentious science policy. I conclude by suggesting some prospects and problems for de-idealizing Feyerabend’s position on disagreement to see whether it may be plausibly implemented. (shrink)

Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (ChatGPT) has been a growing point of interest in medical education yet has not been assessed in the field of bioethics. This study evaluated the accuracy of ChatGPT-3.5 (April 2023 version) in answering text-based, multiple choice bioethics questions at the level of US third-year and fourth-year medical students. A total of 114 bioethical questions were identified from the widely utilised question banks UWorld and AMBOSS. Accuracy, bioethical categories, difficulty levels, specialty data, error analysis and character count (...) were analysed. We found that ChatGPT had an accuracy of 59.6%, with greater accuracy in topics surrounding death and patient–physician relationships and performed poorly on questions pertaining to informed consent. Of all the specialties, it performed best in paediatrics. Yet, certain specialties and bioethical categories were under-represented. Among the errors made, it tended towards content errors and application errors. There were no significant associations between character count and accuracy. Nevertheless, this investigation contributes to the ongoing dialogue on artificial intelligence’s (AI) role in healthcare and medical education, advocating for further research to fully understand AI systems’ capabilities and constraints in the nuanced field of medical bioethics. (shrink)

This collection addresses whether ethicists, like authorities in other fields, can speak as experts in their subject matter. Though ethics consultation is a growing practice in medical contexts, there remain difficult questions about the role of ethicists in professional decision-making. Contributors examine the nature and plausibility of moral expertise, the relationship between character and expertise, the nature and limits of moral authority, how one might become a moral expert, and the trustworthiness of moral testimony. This volume engages with the growing (...) literature in these debates and offers new perspectives from both academics and practitioners. The readings will be of particular interest to bioethicists, clinicians, ethics committees, and students of social epistemology. These new essays promise to advance discussions in the professionalization and accreditation of ethics consultation. (shrink)

This paper surveys some ways of distinguishing Quasi-Realism in metaethics from Non-naturalist Realism, including ‘Explanationist’ methods of distinguishing, which characterize the Real by its explanatory role, and Inferentialist methods. Rather than seeking the One True Distinction, the paper adopts an irenic and pragmatist perspective, allowing that different ways of drawing the line are best for different purposes.